NASA launched its new flagship space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, on Sunday, beginning a multi-year mission to create an unprecedented map of the cosmos. The observatory is designed to shed light on some of the biggest mysteries in physics, including dark matter and dark energy.

Launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the telescope stands over 12 meters tall. It was developed over more than a decade at a cost exceeding $4 billion. The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, a pioneering U.S. astronomer known as the "Mother of Hubble" for her work on NASA's earlier space observatory.

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While the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought, the Roman telescope will seek to answer other unsolved mysteries. Its mission includes surveying vast swaths of the sky to discover thousands of exoplanets and tens of thousands of supernovae. "It will be the biggest catalog of astronomical objects anybody's ever produced, and it will help us understand how common are solar systems like our own," said Dave Content, Roman's technical manager.

The telescope is also intended to investigate dark matter and dark energy, which are believed to comprise about 95 percent of the universe. Dark matter is thought to act as a gravitational glue, while dark energy is considered a repulsive force driving the universe's expansion. Roman's infrared vision will allow it to detect light emitted by celestial objects billions of years ago, offering scientists a glimpse into the universe's distant past and aiding their understanding of these phenomena.

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"Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in April when he unveiled the project. With a field of view more than 100 times larger than Hubble's and significantly wider than the James Webb Space Telescope's, Roman will survey the sky from a vantage point 930,000 miles from Earth, a destination it will take approximately 100 days to reach.

Roman's observations are expected to complement the work of other observatories, such as the Rubin Observatory in Chile and the European Space Agency's Euclid probe. Scientists anticipate that the data gathered could challenge current understandings of the universe's structure. "Recent observations hint that our standard model of the universe is incorrect," said Julie McEnery, Roman's senior project scientist. She added that the telescope will help determine whether existing models are accurate or require revision.

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Scientists and the public will have access to all of Roman's data, which is projected to be about 1.3 terabytes per day. "I very much hope, and in fact expect, that the most exciting science from Roman will be a surprise, something we couldn't predict," McEnery stated. "And that will set the stage for the next deeper set of questions for future missions to address."